Expulsion (education)


Expulsion, also known as dismissal, withdrawal, or permanent exclusion, is the permanent removal or banning of a student from a school, school district, college, university, or TAFE due to persistent violation of that institution's rules, or in extreme cases, for a single offense of marked severity. Colloquialisms for expulsion include being "kicked out of school", "expelled", or "sent down". Laws and procedures regarding expulsion vary between countries and states.
The practice of pressuring parents to voluntarily withdraw their child from an educational institution, termed off-rolling in the UK, is comparable to expulsion. Rates of expulsion may be especially high for students of color, even when their behavioral infractions are the same as those of white children. Certain disabilities, such as autism and ADHD, also increase the risk of expulsion, despite the fact that this could constitute unlawful discrimination in many jurisdictions.

By country

Ireland

In Ireland, a school must notify the local Educational Welfare Officer before expelling a student; they will then try and find a solution. The student cannot be expelled until twenty days after the educational welfare officer has been notified. Under Section 29 of the Education Act 1998 an expelled child's parent may appeal an expulsion to the Secretary General of the Department of Education. The Child and Family Agency may also appeal an expulsion. If the department upholds the expulsion, a further appeal can be brought to the High Court.
In 2017–18, 29 primary school pupils were expelled in Ireland, up from 18 the previous year. In 2015–16, 195 secondary school students were expelled.

New Zealand

In New Zealand, exclusion and expulsion are methods for removing a student from a school for misconduct. Both are governed by sections 13 to 19 of the Education Act 1989, and the Education Stand Down, Suspension, Exclusion, and Expulsion Rules 1999.
The difference between exclusion and expulsion is that students aged under 16 are excluded, while students aged 16 and over are expelled. For students excluded, because they are under the minimum school leaving age, the excluding school is required to find an alternative school for the student to attend, or reinstate the student if another school cannot be found. For students that are expelled, the expelling school is not required to find an alternative school, as the student is over the minimum school leaving age.
Exclusion/expulsion cannot be directly done by the principal. It must be done through suspending the student, and requiring the school's board of trustees, or a standing disciplinary committee of the board, to independently assess whether or not the situation is serious enough to justify exclusion or expulsion of the student.
In 2009, exclusions and expulsions rates were 2.41 and 2.01 per thousand students respectively. Students were more likely to be excluded or expelled if they were male, of Maori or Pacific Island descent, and/or attended a school with a low socioeconomic decile.
The most common reasons for exclusions and expulsions in 2009 were:
  • Continual disobedience – 41.2% of exclusions/25.3% of expulsions
  • Drugs incl. substance abuse – 14.2%/25.8%
  • Physical assault on other students – 17.3%/16.8%
  • Theft – 4.4%/8.9%
  • Verbal assault on staff – 5.0%/2.6%
  • Physical assault on staff – 4.5%/1.6%
  • Weapons – 2.5%/2.6%
  • Vandalism – 1.3%/2.6%
  • Alcohol – 1.0%/3.7%
  • Verbal assault on other students – 1.1%/0.5%
Arson, sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, and smoking were the other main reasons for exclusion and expulsion recorded.

England

State sector

If a student has been expelled from two schools, then any state school is legally allowed to refuse admittance of that student. Schools on special measures may refuse to admit a student who has been expelled from only one school. Therefore, a student who has been expelled from two schools might be totally removed from the state education system. As a result, it is rare for a pupil to be expelled or permanently excluded in the UK's state sector.
The exclusion of pupils is governed by the Education Act 2002.
The Secretary of State's guidance states that exclusion is a serious step. Exclusion should be used only in response to serious breaches of a school's discipline policy and only after a range of alternative strategies to resolve the pupil's disciplinary problems have been tried and proven to have failed and where allowing the pupil to remain in school would be seriously detrimental to the education or welfare of other pupils and staff, or of the pupil himself or herself.

In practice, a student can usually be subject to permanent exclusion for a total of five disciplinary breaches, for which the student does not have to receive formal warnings. Depending on their offence, a child can be excluded from the school system within any range of time after their misdeed. Though the teaching staff may recommend a pupil to be expelled, only the headteacher is legally empowered to exclude a student; he or she is not permitted to delegate that power to another person, but if he or she is ill or otherwise unable to perform their duties, another staff member may become the acting headteacher and inherit the power to expel students.
When excluding a student, the headteacher must inform the pupil's parents of the duration of the exclusion whether it be temporary or permanent, reasons for exclusion, and the procedures which a parent may take to make an appeal. The headteacher must also inform the local education authority of the circumstances surrounding permanent exclusions, fixed term exclusions exceeding five days, and exclusions which result in a student being unable to take a public examination.
Reasons for permanent exclusion
A headteacher might expel a student out for a first or one-off incident of appropriate severity. For a single case of one of the following, a pupil can be permanently excluded for:
If a student has previous disciplinary records of violating other school rules and regulations, that too could result in expulsion. In these cases, expulsion is used as a final resort if the student has shown no signs of improvement in his or her behaviour despite disciplinary measures, and has failed to respond to a final warning. Some offences which may result in expulsion when repeated persistently include, but is not limited to:
Pupils who have done nothing wrong to merit expulsion are sometimes expelled if the school does not expect them to achieve sufficiently high grades in external examinations. This illegal policy is known as "off-rolling", and seriously harms the life chances of young people.
Appeals
The pupil and their parents can appeal to the school governors against the expulsion. If the appeal fails to reinstate the pupil, a further appeal can be made to an appeals board which sits on the behalf of the local education authority.
Appeals to the governors
The parents of an excluded pupil are entitled to appeal against expulsion or an exclusion exceeding five days to a panel of school governors acting as a court.
The panel, which consists of parents and staff and cannot include the headteacher, is not legally able to exclude a pupil or extend a term of exclusion; but it can convert a permanent exclusion to a fixed term one, reduce the length of a fixed-term exclusion, or cancel an exclusion.
The appeal must occur no sooner than six days after and no more than 15 days after the exclusion begins. The panel considers oral, written, or physical evidence from the school detailing the case for expulsion, and from the parents of the excluded pupil. The pupil and their parents may argue that the excluded pupil was not responsible for the act for which they have been excluded, or that the punishment was disproportionate to the offence.
Appeal to the local education authority
If the appeal to the governors is unsuccessful, an expelled or excluded student and their parents may go to an appeals board. This panel, which is appointed by the local education authority, must be autonomous of the authority, the school, and the parents of the excluded student.
The majority of the appeals that these panels hear are not against exclusions, but are for the admission of pupils into schools. Although the local education authority are in theory obligated to provide education to a pupil under school leaving age Year 11 and below, in practice usually when the pupil is denied access to other schools or the pupil referral unit the local education authority employs techniques such as appointing a single tutor for one lesson a week.
Legal advice and representation
There are a number of projects that provide free legal representation to pupils who are appealing against their permanent exclusions from school. The institution cited in letters detailing the reasons for permanent exclusions is the Coram Children's Legal Centre.
There are voluntary groups who provide trainee lawyers to represent parents at both governing body appeals and independent appeal panels. The City School Exclusion Service is one such project.